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Vote
early, Vote often:
It's obvious that on this bleak day, the hearts of Manitobans were weary as they pulled themselves to the polls to vote in the 21st provincial election. Nobody had the provincial election on their mind. Only five out of 10 people showed up at the polls, making for the lowest voter turnout in Manitoba's history – a testament to the fact that world events affect voter turnout. Historically, Manitobans have been pretty good voters. The highest turnout we ever experienced was 87 per cent in 1903. Nowadays, fewer people are getting out to the polls every election; in 1999, only 68 per cent of Manitobans showed up to vote. Why was it easier for people to saddle up the horse and buggy to get out and vote in 1903 than it is now, in our technology-driven, simplified society? "Because there were fewer people voting," says Brenda O'Neill, a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba. Women didn't get the right to vote in Manitoba until 1916, and it wasn't until 1952 that First Nations people in Manitoba received the right to cast a ballot. O'Neill says it also had to do with patronage. "If you wanted a particular kind of job, you needed to vote for the right party. Or maybe you would get a mug of beer afterwards," she says. O'Neill says political parties were far more influential way back when, probably because they were more connected to the people, given the smaller population. These days, however, the solutions to improving voter turnout are not as easy to identify. • Education = money = votes • "Increase income, increase education," suggests O'Neill."If we could do that, more people would turn out." That's not the whole equation, though. "People with a very low income, very low education, [voting] is not what's important to them," she says.
She says the more money you make the more likely you are to turn out to vote, because one of the things that money affords you is free time. It's easy for upper-middle-class professionals to find the time to read a newspaper, but "if you were a single mom with two kids, it's unlikely you could do those sorts of things," she says. In the northern riding of Rupertsland, only 39 per cent of the population came out to vote in 1999. Rupertsland residents also have the least education in the province; statistics show more than 34 per cent have less than a Grade 9 education. Compare that to River Heights, where residents have the highest voter turnout in Manitoba. They also have the most residents with university degrees: 38.5 per cent. Although this ratio holds true for most ridings, O'Neill points out that on a larger scale, "the greatest irony of all is that turnout is falling, but education is rising." Income leads to education, and education is a major factor in affecting voter turnout. But those are not the only factors affecting turnout. • Disinterested youth• "Over time, voter turnout is dropping, but the decline over time probably has more to do with how people feel about politics generally," says O'Neill. Low turnout is highly prevalent among young people, she notes. "It' not because they're turned off, it's because they don't think it's all that important," she says. "If you ask them, they will tell you things like 'I'm too busy, I don't have time,' which means it's not a priority. So why isn't it a priority?" Some young people don't vote because they are unhappy with the system altogether – but O'Neill says a better way to make the point is to spoil the ballot. Ballot-spoiling makes more of a statement than not voting at all because it sends the message that the voter is displeased. "When you don't vote at all, they don't know if you're not
voting because you're unhappy or because you just don't care,"
she says. "The lower the turnout, the more problematic it becomes," says O'Neill. "If there aren't enough voters for [the government] to say, 'I know what the people want', then you don't even know what they're thinking."
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Watch CBC's Leaders' Debate (aired May 30, runs 38 min.) 
